Peking to Lhasa : vol.1 / Page 89 (Color Image)

0089	Peking to Lhasa : vol.1

A SHOOTING EXPEDITION 59

crossing a dashing hill torrent. At the end of the

march he put up with Father Liu-P'ei, a Chinese

Catholic priest, in a charming mission house

situated on the hill-side, 600 feet above the valley

and with a court inside filled with beautiful

flowers. Here Pereira was laid up for fifty-three

days with a blistered foot, due to his walking in

sandals. And his stay was not rendered any the

pleasanter by the weather, for it rained nearly

every day in September.

At last he set out after pandar once more on

September 28. He took with him his two boys,

three hunters and seven coolies and a man with

a kind of chair on which he could be carried over

rivers. The country was so bad he still could not

wear boots, but used some local sandals which he

found very comfortable. He proceeded nearly

due north up the valley of the Teng-ch'ih-kou.

There were a few Chinese hovels scattered over

the valley, each with its patch of maize cabbages

or buckwheat. But Pereira wondered how their

inhabitants could endure the severe winter, as

the huts were ill-built of planks and brushwood

and had many openings to the weather.

After going 11 miles up the valley Pereira

halted for the night and put up his bed under an

overhanging rock by the stream, whilst the rest

of the party spent the night under other rocks.

The next day he left the main valley and ascended

a smaller tributary valley on the west and pitched

a tent about a mile up it. He then for some days

climbed about the neighbouring hills, often in

drenching rain, and frequently along a slippery

track on the face of a precipice. Taking with him

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